Home » A small detail the Times left out of the 1619 Project…

Comments

A small detail the <i>Times</i> left out of the 1619 Project… — 47 Comments

  1. The Democrats do not now, and never have, wanted whites and blacks to be judged according to their character. They always wanted and still want to judge people based on their races, with unequal criteria.

    They used to be anti-black racists (pro-white), now they are pro-black racists (anti-white).

    Racism is wanting a policy that judges humans differently based on their race — the Dems today want racist policies, which makes them racist.

    The Rep-supporting conversation needs to define racism better — to want unequal criteria for judging humans. We can only ever stop racism by first stopping racist policies.

    “Affirmative Action” is a racist policy that should be clearly called racist; “reparations” would also be a racist policy. Those who support either are racists.

  2. The leftists are always rewriting history. Don’t forget the KKK was founded by Democrats and the last KKK member of congress was a democrat. Martin Luther King was a Republican and was murdered by a democrat but today the democrats try to claim MLK as one of them and the man who murdered him is some evil right wing racist.

  3. Of course if pressed on that inconvenient historical truth, the Dems will trot out their theory of how the parties switched philosophies as part of Nixon’s “southern strategy”. I suspect that their might be some truth behind that, but America has become much more regionally homogenized since the late ’60s.

  4. Martin Luther King was a Republican and was murdered by a democrat but today the democrats try to claim MLK as one of them and the man who murdered him is some evil right wing racist.

    Ray: Next thing you will be telling me is that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Marxist!

    I never quite settled on the MLK assassination. It looks like James Earl Ray, a two-bit-cracker-felon, did the deed, but somehow this loser managed to elude international law enforcement for two months, while bopping around from the US to Canada to England to Portugal.

    Then again, my faith in law enforcement is not what once was after the Trump “collusion” and the Epstein suicide or whatever it was.

  5. There is no 2 in yesterday.

    neo: More’s the pity. As RFK said, quoting GB Shaw, “I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

    “y2esterday” would be a fun name for a rock band.

  6. huxley:

    Do you know that Tom Lehrer bit about a guy named Henry, who spelled his name Hen3ry (the 3 was silent, of course)?

  7. It looks like James Earl Ray, a two-bit-cracker-felon, did the deed, but somehow this loser managed to elude international law enforcement for two months, while bopping around from the US to Canada to England to Portugal.

    My sister was in her early years a special education teacher. She’d have been happy to tell you that unintelligent people are often, nevertheless, cunning. He had a long history of criminal conduct (including three stints in state prison), and some skills derived from that.

    Pet peeve: Ray wasn’t a Southerner. He grew up in the Illinois-Missouri borderlands in small cities and small towns north-northwest of St. Louis. He had some time in the military, some time in southern California, some time in prison, some time on the lam. Otherwise, he lived his first 40 years where he grew up or in St. Louis, or in other spots in Missouri. And he never lived in the Southern sections of Missouri (that would be the Bootheel, the Ozarks, and the area around Joplin). Ray and King were alike in one minor respect: neither had any history in Memphis. That’s just where they crossed paths.

  8. One near universal truth about the extreme leftists (I do not include moderates and liberals in this. I am talking about the true socialist revolutionaries, such as “The Squad”, Bernie Sanders, etc…) is that they invariably accuse their enemies of exactly those sins of which they themselves are most guilty. I saw this and first noticed it in the rhetoric of Hugo Chavez. After that, I started looking for it.

    Chavez accused his enemies of being fascist. By nearly all of the definitions I could find, Chavez was a fascist. I could go on and on…

    I am now seeing the same trend with the leftist extremists in the U.S. They accused Trump of collusion with the Russians. Yet, they are the ones who are in lockstep with Putin’s propaganda machine, RT. They accuse the Right of racism, when they are clearly promoting and creating racism or are indeed racist. They accuse the Right of being motivated by hate, but support all manner of hate groups. They accuse the Right of violence but support the violence of groups like Antifa.

    Watch their accusations carefully. These are signposts that indicate exactly what they are up to.

  9. I noticed a long time ago that leftists are obsessed with sex, race and money and that is why they are always accusing others of being sexist, racist, classist, homophobes, etc. It’s just classical psychological projection and they seem totally oblivious to their own behavior.

  10. Only the abysmally ignorant and indoctrinated think that America was founded upon slavery. It’s unethical politics 101; If you can’t dazzle then with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. Any accusation that advances the agenda is justified by the end sought. And the end they seek; utopia and the end to hate, greed and inequality… justifies anything. Some just have to be made to see it but some are too irredeemable to be saved.

  11. Of course, the year 1622 was just three years away from 1619, when the Powhatan Confederacy attacked the English settlers by surprise, killing about one-quarter of the population in various massacres. Between that and King Philip’s War (1675-1678), the colonists became convinced that peaceful coexistence with the Indians was not possible, and that ultimately they were on their own.

    Those events were more formative in the development of an American identity, as well as the nature and results of the English Civil War (1642-1651). By the time that war started, twenty thousand Puritans alone had settled in New England, and all of them had ten to twelve children each, leading to that region’s particular culture.

    It was always the English settlement of the various colonies in North America that gave this country its founding identity. It was never about any of the other European countries, and certainly not about the incidental presence of a handful of Africans with no agency of their own. Compare this to Central and South America, where the nature of Spanish colonization (and the far higher numbers of indigenous peoples) made all the difference.

  12. I haven’t read any of the articles in the project but could it have something to do with the fact that American slavery existed for over two centuries before the democratic party was founded? Are they writing chronologically?

  13. So I took a look at the very first essay, America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One.

    Southern Democrats are mentioned: “In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to secure a compromise with Southern Democrats that would grant him the presidency in a contested election, agreed to pull federal troops from the South.”

    That might annoy you (given that the Republican here is collaborating with the White Supremacists) so I also give you this: “These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen.”

    I’m sure that one will make you all happy.

  14. “Martin Luther King was a Republican”

    Not sure that’s true — here’s Encyclopedia Britannica on which party he belonged to:

    The official answer is neither. King talked very infrequently about his personal politics and was not formally affiliated with either political party. Nor did he explicitly endorse any candidate. In fact, he stated, “I don’t think the Republican Party is a party full of the almighty God, nor is the Democratic Party. They both have weaknesses. And I’m not inextricably bound to either party.” What’s more, the parties of King’s time were different from the parties we know today; policies and platforms have changed drastically over time. According to King biographer David J. Garrow, King was fond of some Republican politicians, such as Richard Nixon, although it is almost certain that King voted for Democrats John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Among the few times he ventured into open partisanship was to denounce Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who, as a senator, had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King said in an interview, “I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.” Although King supported Johnson’s presidential campaign, he later spoke out about his dissatisfaction with Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War.

  15. So I took a look at the very first essay, America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One.

    I have news for you and various and sundry dolts employed as headline-cutters for the Sulzberger Birdcage Liner. Almost no country which had elective and deliberative institutions prior to 1860 extended the suffrage to adult males without qualification. Suffrage was restricted by property qualifications and poll taxes or allocated in a most uneven fashion among tax classes. France was the only European country which had in 1860 a notional suffrage regime which permitted more than 20% of the adult male population to cast ballots. (It was not until 1869 in France that elected officials had a consistent and reliable store of authority, btw). By contrast, in the U.S. ca. 1815, about 40% of the adult male population had the suffrage and property and tax screens were largely eliminated by 1835.

  16. Not sure that’s true

    No it isn’t. La di da.

    Now ask yourself why King was noncommittal between the political parties and black politicians today – parliamentary and extraparliamentary alike – are almost uniformly drawn from the Democratic Party. Ask yourself why black voters uniformly support the Democratic Party. Put some effort into coming up with something other than a facile answer.

  17. Barry Goldwater was a major funder of the NAACP lawsuit in his home state, Arizona, which resulted in the state Supreme Court’s outlawing segregated public schools. The ruling was in 1953, the year before I entered an Arizona kindergarten. He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he thought the federal system called for segregated schools to be repealed state by state. One can disagree with his policy preference, but he wasn’t any kind of racist.

  18. “I’m sure that one will make you all happy.”

    Sure! Democracy, broadened to the extent that it is a friend of constitutional polities, enhances my personal liberty, and frees me of the claims of annoying people whose interests may not be synonymous with mine, makes me very happy.

    “Democracy” the way buggers define it, mutated into a dictatorship of the proletariat and leper’s orgy … well, not so much.

    As for “egalitarianism”, who needs it if you are free and live among virtuous people? And if you don’t have virtuous self-governing and self-reliant people as your political peers: Why, and what good are they?

  19. Diversity or color (i.e. low information attributes) judgment breeds adversity.

    Oh, and reparations for the hundreds of thousands of men, and their Posterity, who did not kneel, but stood to confront involuntary exploitation, redistributive change, and diversity exported from Africa.

  20. slavery… exported from Africa

    As well as native nations and tribes in the Western hemisphere, and the party that brayed together.

  21. Do you know that Tom Lehrer bit about a guy named Henry, who spelled his name Hen3ry (the 3 was silent, of course)?

    neo: I thought I knew the Lehrer ouevre. Is it in a song or was it a bit of stand-up?

  22. Manju:

    Are you really as dense as you seem? Or is it some sort of pose?

    Do you really think that a failure to “mention the historic role of the Democrats“—that “historic role” being (as I mention at the outset of the post) “the fact that the Democrats were the party of slavery as well as the party of Jim Crow and segregation”—do you really feel that the example you gave falls into that category?

    That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. Of course it doesn’t. The “mention” that you mention is not what I was talking about nor is it what D’Souza was talking about.

    The D’Souza video is now at YouTube, here. What D’Souza claims there is that “the 1619 Project says NOTHING about the role of the Democratic party in supporting and sustaining slavery and racism.”

    I still can’t decide if you’re being paid to do this. If so, they’re not getting their money’s worth.

  23. Tom Lehrer is the gift that keeps on giving. I remembered Hen3ry, and that it was from an intro, but had forgotten what song the intro led to.

  24. Neo,

    When the author mentions “a compromise with Southern Democrats that…agreed to pull federal troops from the South” the author is indeed referencing “the fact that the Democrats were the party of slavery as well as the party of Jim Crow and segregation.”

    Why is that? Because pulling federal troops out of the South was central to maintaining Jim Crow.

    Did you think the troops were there to protect us from an invasion of rapists from Mexico? Glad I could clear that up.

  25. Manju:

    The jury is still out on whether you’re really as dense as you seem.

    You response is laughable. A person has to have a lot of extra knowledge to figure out what you describe here. What’s more, do you really not understand that in a huge lengthy multi-faceted treatment of the influence of slavery and discrimination against black people in the US, there should be a lot of not just cryptic “mention” in a sentence like you offer, but discussion and presentation of (and I repeat myself) “the fact that the Democrats were the party of slavery as well as the party of Jim Crow and segregation, and the Republicans were the anti-slavery party.”

    I repeat: whatever they pay you (even if it’s nothing) they’re not getting their money’s worth.

  26. “What’s more, do you really not understand that in a huge lengthy multi-faceted treatment of the influence of slavery and discrimination against black people in the US, there should be a lot of not just cryptic “mention” in a sentence like you offer …”

    The mention, the arch insinuation, and what’s contentiously left unsaid, is bait; meant to provoke a bite, not a real debate.

    That’s why it’s called trolling.

    You can only use a troll for your own ends, to make your own point. You cannot talk to one as if it is a real person, much less as a worthy peer.

  27. That said, I’d recommend that you continue to let Manju comment. You don’t want an echo chamber, and the prospect of getting a leftist here who will debate fundamental anthropological issues and overtly try to establish its claims to your life and energies, is nil anyway.

    It’s not how they work in the big scheme of things as many of them have themselves noted repeatedly. They do not engage that way because 1., Their conclusions cannot be defended as entailed from premisses which are themselves indubitable (Rorty’s admission) ; and 2, to debate an opponent is to dignify that opponent as someone with a position that deserves to be heard out. That kind of tolerance has no place in the matured leftist scheme of things.(Marcuse)

    Thus, hit and run, and make you do the work of chasing links and arguing with insinuations. A strategy not intended to resolve an issue, but to discredit an opponent.

  28. DNW:

    Actually, I think the main function is to keep people busy answering and answering, and re-inventing the wheel over and over, which is distracting and time-consuming and often frustrating for people to do.

    But I think it can be clarifying and edifying to have someone like Manju here. It keeps people on their toes and also instructs on the latest leftist talking points, hot off the press as it were.

  29. (slightly edited, as the posted lyrics did not match the rhyme scheme Lehrer, ahem, invented)

    Tom Lehrer – We Will All Go Together When We Go – with intro …
    https://www.youtube.com › watch
    Lyrics
    I am reminded at this point of a fellow I used to know
    whose name was Henry, only to give you an idea of what
    a individualist he was, he spelled it H-E-N-3-R-Y –
    the three was silent, you see.

    Henry was financially independent, having inherited his
    father’s tar-and-feather business, and was therefore
    able to devote his full time to such intellectual pursuits
    as writing. I particularly remember a heartwarming novel
    of his about a young necrophiliac who finally achieved his
    boyhood ambition by becoming coroner… (The rest of you
    can look it up when you get home.)

    In addition to writing, he indulged in a good deal of
    philosophizing. Like so many contemporary philosophers, he
    especially enjoyed giving helpful advice to people who were
    happier than he was. And one particular bit of advice which
    I recall – which is the reason I bring up this whole dreary
    story – is something he said once, before they took him away
    to the “Massachusetts State Home for the Bewildered”.

    He said: “Life is like a sewer – what you get out of it depends
    on what you put into it.” It’s always seemed to me that this
    is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so
    desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and
    universal brouhaha. And so with this in mind, I have here a
    modern, positive, dynamic, uplifting song, in the tradition
    of the great old revival hymns. This one might more accurately
    be termed a survival hymn. It goes like this:

    When you attend a funeral
    It is sad to think that sooner o’ L-
    ater those you love will do the same for you
    And you may have thought it tragic
    Not to mention other adject-
    ives, to think of all the weeping they will do
    (But don’t you worry.)

    No more ashes, no more sackcloth
    And an armband made of black cloth
    Will some day never more adorn a sleeve
    For if the bomb that drops on you
    Gets your friends and neighbors too
    There’ll be nobody left behind to grieve

    And we will all go together when we go
    What a comforting fact that is to know
    Universal bereavement
    An inspiring achievement
    Yes, we all will go together when we go

    We will all go together when we go
    All suffuse with an incandescent glow
    No one will have the endurance
    To collect on his insurance
    Lloyd’s of London will be loaded when they go.

    Oh we will all fry together when we fry
    We’ll be french fried potatoes by and by
    There will be no more misery
    When the world is our rotisserie
    Yes, we will all fry together when we fry
    (tune change)
    Down by the old maelstrom
    There’ll be a storm before the calm
    (back to main tune)
    And we will all bake together when we bake
    There’ll be nobody present at the wake
    With complete participation
    In that grand incineration
    Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak

    Oh we will all char together when we char
    And let there be no moaning of the bar
    Just sing out a Te Deum
    When you see that I.C.B.M.
    And the party will be “come-as-you-are.”

    Oh we will all burn together when we burn
    There’ll be no need to stand and wait your turn
    When it’s time for the fallout
    And Saint Peter calls us all out
    We’ll just drop our agendas and adjourn.

    (semi-chant)
    You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas
    Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dolla’s

    And we will all go together when we go
    Ev’ry Hottenhot an’ ev’ry Eskimo
    When the air becomes uranious
    And we will all go simultaneous
    Yes we all will go together
    When we all go together
    Yes, we all will go together when we go.

    Source: Musixmatch
    Songwriters: Tom Lehrer

  30. there should be a lot of not just cryptic “mention” in a sentence like you offer,

    Neo, when the author writes; “These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen” she is indeed referencing the fact that “the Republicans were the anti-slavery party.”

    As to why there aren’t more references. I don’t know if there aren’t. This is only the first installment. And I only read the first article in the first installment. I don’t know what in the rest and it doesn’t appear that you do either.

  31. Manju:

    Your example was an irrelevant one, as I said. It doesn’t address the point.

    This entire post is a report by me on what Dinesh D’Souza said was in it or not in it, coupled with other summaries I’ve read about it. The reason I tried so hard to get the D’Souza video into the post was that it provided the documentation on the Times’ 1619 Project’s recent publication and what it said and didn’t say. You or anyone else are perfectly free to criticize D’Souza’s analysis and statements and provide examples of how the Times discussed “the fact that the Democrats were the party of slavery as well as the party of Jim Crow and segregation, and the Republicans were the anti-slavery party.” It is an extremely salient fact and should have been a major focus of the 1619 Project. You have failed to provide a counter to D’Souza’s contention that it wasn’t dealt with. That doesn’t mean what he says can’t be countered, but it does mean that you have failed to do so.

    The Democrats were the party of slavery, both before the Civil War and after. The Republicans were the anti-slavery party. It’s not just a moment or a few years that this was true. It was true for a long, long, long time. That fact is virtually ignored by the MSM in general and/or even distorted at times, so much so that when you say to most people that the Democrats were the party of slavery and the GOP the anti-slavery party they think you are lying or mistaken. I have had that happen to me several times.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>